


until i'm in my grave

by theedas



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Human Trafficking, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 11,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3365648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theedas/pseuds/theedas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason came back wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Royal Republic's ["Good to Be Bad"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkBW6F44Xbo).

Jason came back wrong.

He knows it, _lives it_ with every stolen breath, every heartbeat counting down to something that happened years ago. He feels like Wile E. Coyote, pulling off more and more dangerous stunts, just waiting for the other anvil to fall, waiting to die.

Again.

He's not sure if he even can, but part of him wants to know, wants to know it now just pull the trigger and then it’ll be over no more games _just do it, you idiot_.

Part of him is a coward.

He stares into the mirror and _his fingers dig into his forearm, pull, nails scrabbling, tearing, ripping,_ _come on boy wonder surely that old man o' yours taught you some tricks to make sure you weren't_  completely  _useless_  he doesn’t recognize the face he sees.

He catalogues his features until he can rattle them off from memory: two eyes (blue); a sharp nose; a flat mouth with pale lips; a sharp jaw, covered with a thin layer of stubble. He has no scars on his face, save one just under his hairline that stretches to the tip of his ear. The crowbar had smashed there, he remembers, cut through the skin and he'd heard something crunch and thought _this is it._ He traces the line with trembling fingers that slip easily through black hair cropped close to prevent the inevitable curls.

His reflection blinks and his lashes spike, dark and thick. He looks like he’s crying, like he's going to cry any minute now.

His lips twist into a disgusted snarl; he looks weak.

 _Fingers card through his hair. A voice, low and rough, says,_ "Pretty".

He glances away from the mirror, fingers clenching around the edge of the counter. There's a jagged edge from the cheap cut and when his palm presses against it, there's a brief spark of pain. He breathes out shakily.

For a second, he wishes he never had to look at his reflection-the reflection of a man he doesn't know, doesn't recognize, who looks too much like his father and not enough like his mother. His _real_ mother.

Then he looks back at the mirror because he needs to shave.

After he’s washed the last of the cream away, his fingers tighten around the handle of his razor. It’s cheap, one of the disposable ones, he got a pack of twelve from a gas station convenience store. The blade’s sharp enough.

He puts it against the inside of his wrist, and-

 

His heart pounds and-

 

He presses down and-

 

He swallows and-

 

 

 

The razor goes back into the paper cup he keeps by the sink.

Another day begins.


	2. Chapter 2

Gothamites like to pretend there’s nothing wrong during the day. Gotham by daylight is: high society and business and press conferences and back to schoolworkthe daily grind. The city seems almost tame, hiding her scars under layers of cover up and glitz and glamour.

Then, at night, those layers are wiped away. That's when the ugliness underneath shows through. Gotham _bleeds_ , and the rats come pouring in.

The only pretending that happens during the night comes from whispered words: _I love you_ and _I’m sorry_ and _I’m fine_ and _we’re going to be_ _okay_ and _it can’t get worse than this_.

Jason prefers Gotham’s night-he’s one of the few who do-but that being said, he doesn’t like to waste the day.

He meets up with a contact of Talia’s, a woman dressed sharply in suit and tie. She looks like she belongs in an executive meeting, like she should be in a boardroom somewhere, looking down and deciding the future of Gotham and her people.

Her accent gives her away when nothing else does; she captures the vowels perfectly, biting off the words the same way anyone on the street would. But she speaks too quickly, doesn’t have the slow, sneering drawl of a true Gothamite. It would be out of place on a woman who exudes control.

Anyone worth anything in Gotham ditches the accent as soon as they can. Bruce never had it, though he can emulate it perfectly. Dickhead picked it up easily, but it slips sometimes. The Replacement can pull it off well enough.

He’d wondered if Dynamic Duo Número Uno had been the ones to teach Damian how to speak like a native Gothamite. Maybe the kid had studied it by himself or he’d picked it up on the street. Then Damian had died and there was no point wondering.

He says nothing of this to his contact, who he recognizes almost right away. He doesn’t tell her that either, just locks away thoughts of a family of fucked up people he doesn't need.

The meeting passes quickly-almost too quickly-without any bloodshed or weapons drawn. It’s all very civil, something he’s sure would shock the Bats too much to even accept.

The rest of the day is quiet, at least by Gotham standards. Two attempted robberies, three assaults, one arson in progress. He leaves the men dead and waiting for a ride to the morgue.

The fire, he can't stop, but he gets the old woman living on the top floor out of the building; everyone else had already left, spilling out of the building like bilge rats, clutching their belongings. Her husband had left her to die on her own. He makes a note to visit the man later.

She thanks him when he lands with her in his arms. Then she pats his helmet and tells him that he should leave the rescues from burning buildings to the people who get paid to do it.

He reminds her that firefighters aren't paid that much, not in Gotham.  
She laughs until it turns into full-blown wheezing, at which point he gives her his rebreather and sits with her until the ambulance arrives, and she can sit in a proper wheelchair, instead the rusted model he had found her in.

She’s rushed into the back of the ambulance coughing but smiling. She waves once, before Jason disappears, and then she's gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for child trafficking, violence, violent deaths (?)

Two hours later, he’s on a rooftop five miles south, overlooking the Burnley freight yards. Word on the steet's that there’s going to be 'cargo' arriving in an hour. A part of him wonders when people started referring to other people as cargo.

He sets up a bug on the ground so he can hear if things turn ugly before he steps in, then settles on a high rise nearby - not like there's anything else, really, not in Gotham. He waits.

A group of men arrive about thirty minutes before the drop off. He considers moving in early but then dismisses the idea. If the transporters come and see their welcoming party is missing, they might start destroying the evidence and he doesn't want the cargo – _people –_ in the train to be caught in the crossfire any more than they absolutely need to be to pull this off.

He fights down a wave of nausea and revulsion at even thinking of the people trapped inside the train as cargo rather than as people, then schools himself into cold calmness. Or at least, he tries to.

When the head of the group - a native Gothamite, sick enough to be branded one even if the accent didn't give him away - starts to talk, his carefully wrested calm disappears. When his men begin discussing exactly what they would do if they could keep a 'pet' or two, his vision seems to go red at the edges and he grits his teeth, fists clenching.

He's moving before he even realizes it.

The men shout when he lands neatly on top one of them, boots planted on his chest.  
He goes down with a choked yell, and Jason uses the momentum to roll forward and punch another one in the throat.  
He drops pretty quickly.

"It's the Bat", someone shouts, and he hears a whimper.

The remaining men scatter, drawing their guns but Jason ignores them in favour of the leader. Beneath his helmet, Jason's lips peel into a snarl of rage and he shoots the piece of scum in the lung so he can die slowly and painfully. Then he reconsiders and shoots him again, this time in the heart because just the one bullet might not be enough and the man might live, if he gets treatment fast enough. As unlikely as that is in Gotham, there seems to be an exception to the general rule when it comes to people who don't operate through legal courses of action. 

He turns to the other three men, one of whom steps back, crossing himself. He tries to run, so Jason shoots him first.

The other two stare at the dead men around them, then at each other.

One of them tries to shoot with shaking hands. The bullets land somewhere behind him and to the right.  
The other is significantly more composed however, and his shots slams into Jason's Kevlar suit with a thud he feels with his entire body. A burst of pain blooms under his skin. He grits his teeth and doesn't let himself react to it.

"What do you want with us?" The first man - a teenager, really, maybe seventeen years old tops (and ain't that just like Gotham, to recruit kids into her wars) - demands shakily. Because he's a kid, Jason slits his throat quickly and as painlessly as he can manage.

That leaves him with the second man, who had continued shooting at Jason while the kid had been talking. He hadn't seemed to have learned anything from the fact that Jason was completely fine, or maybe didn't understand the concept of Kevlar vests because he reaches for another clip as soon as the first ran out.

While he's reloading, Jason stalks forward

He feels like there's something in his skin, something other than pain and _hurthurhurtagainboyblunder._ It bubbles underneath it, and for a brief second, he imagines it boiling over until there’s nothing left inside him, and he’s an empty husk of a man and a broken oath. _To fight_ together _against crime and corruption---_

Barely contained anger makes him grab the man and _twist_ , until there’s a crunching noise. The man drops, screaming and grabbing at his arm as if that would make the pain go away. Jason knows from experience that it doesn’t, so he shoots him.

The guy he'd punched in the throat is stirring, up until he stomps on the throat instead, feeling it collapse under his boot. He wipes the sole of his boot on the man's shirt before he moves on to the one he'd landed on and presses the muzzle into the man’s forehead. His eyes widen and he opens his mouth –to scream, to plead, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. He pulls the trigger.

He cleans up after himself, because it pays to be neat and because he doesn't want any loose ends from an op gone wrong. (Doesn’t want _this_ op to go wrong.) He drags the bodies out of the way. Someone will find them in a few hours but he's not planning on being anywhere near the yard by that time. Not that he couldn't evade – of all forces – the _GCPD._

Just as he's finished moving the last corpse, the train pulls in. He'd thought that there would be more men, but only three come out from the front car.  
The men - Slovakians, he thinks - are visibly confused when they see the blood and no bodies. Apprehensive, but less wary than they would have been had the bodies still been lying where they had died.

He kills them, one by one.

The last man screams when Jason appears, screams when he dies, screams until he's gargling his own blood and sobbing for mercy. Jason shoots him again to make him shut up.

This time, he leaves the bodies.

The train is long, but there are no people in the last five cars, nor the six after. It figures that the last thing he tried would be the one he needed, which seems to be the theme of his life.

When he breaks off the lock on the car and rolls the door open, someone shoots him. The bullet lands in his thigh, which means this one, at least, had good aim. He stifles the urge to cry or scream out whatever useless response his body's programmed to make, and uses the pain as fuel to shoot back. Because he has significantly better aim, and no one bothers to wear head protection other than Jason, his shots are much more effective than the one he'd received.

He allows himself, for a second, to _feel_ the pain, to acknowledge the agony running through his leg, and the _burnburnbleed_.

Then someone sobs, and he sees the kids.  
Because they _are_ kids- the oldest looks fifteen, the youngest maybe five - and they're _markedboundownedslavesvictims_ obviously terrified.

He holsters his gun and limps towards them slowly. They flinch, cowering against the wall behind them. The one crying grows louder. They're terrified of _him,_ he realizes, and it's a kick in the gut.

He takes off his helmet and the muggy, polluted stench of Gotham hits him like a tractor trailer. He drops the helmet and tries to smile reassuringly.

They huddle closer together, wordless, wide-eyed and shaking.

He can’t help the pang of self-directed hate, the feeling that there’s something _wrongwrongwrongwrong_ with him because Robin could do this, Robin did this. _He_  was Robin and he did this.

But obviously, he’s not Robin-not anymore, at least-and he can’t do this, so he stops smiling.

"Are you okay?" He asks, and his voice comes out dry and crackling. He realizes he hasn't said a word since he’d talked to the old woman two hours earlier. He swallows and repeats the phrase in as many languages he knows it in. With each repetition, they seem to shrink into themselves until one of the girls recognize his Urdu, broken and grammatically incorrect as it is.

She asks if he is one of the men sent to pick them up and he shakes his head. Introduces himself, even though he knows the name will mean nothing to them.

He tells them that he killed the men sent to pick them up, that he's contacted the police and he's sorry he can't do anything more, but he's not going to hurt them. That if they're lucky, they'll never see him again. He unties them and some of the younger ones hug him, crying and sobbing phrases in languages he doesn't know yet. The older ones hang back. They, at least, don't trust him yet.

Smart kids.

He waits with them until the sirens are almost upon them, then watches from his rooftop to make sure they'll be okay.

Then he leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't want to die like _this_.

He manages to get as far as a mile away, before he ends up thudding onto a rooftop and-

 _Painpainpain_ lances up his side, he feels his knees buckle beneath him –

He gasps, maybe screams, maybe blacks out –

Blinks –

Sees darkness and stars _but there are no stars in Gotham, no lights in the abyss –_

Feels emptiness beneath him, and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

he wakes in a puddle of his own blood, cold, nauseous and dizzy. 

He pushes himself up with shaking limbs and takes a look around. After a few too many blinks, he realizes that he’s near the East End, too far from a safehouse to get medical supplies.

He’s near the East End.

He gets up and keeps moving. Even though he feels weak, even though he knows that he can’t keep going for much longer, he grits his teeth and limps faster. He can't afford to rest-not when he doesn't know how long he was out for or just how much blood he lost in that time.

He thinks about firing a line, but he doesn't want to risk passing out while in the air, doesn't want to die falling into traffic, not this way,  _not like this._

So he walks on Gotham's rooftops, mindful of the blood drenched bandages he’d wrapped around his leg. 

He sees the neon-lit sign about ten minutes after his leg becomes numb. In the heavy Gotham night, it's like a light in the abyss, the roiling cesspool that is Gotham’s East End. Something bitter catches in his throat.

He swallows. Closes his eyes.

Drops.

It's more of a fall than a jump, and he lands awkwardly on the doorstep of the Free Clinic, breath shallow and a haze creeping into the edges of his vision. He grips onto the wood of the doorway, feels splinters digging into his glove, and knows that _this_ , at least, is real.

Then he doesn't know anything else.


	5. Chapter 5

He dreams of "forehand? Or backhand?", laughter, and a ticking countdown. When it reaches zero, the clock becomes a flatlined EKG, and the noise grows louder until it drowns out his thoughts, his heartbeat.

He screams, but he can't hear himself.

Screams, but there's dirt in his mouth, in his nose, falling on top of him, surrounding him, _burying_ him.

Screams, but he's gasping for breath, earth pushing down on his chest and his lungs can't expand and he's scrabbling to dig himself out but he doesn't know which way is up and he just

can't

breathe.

 

He dies.

 

Then he wakes up, throat raw and fingers scratching at his throat, his mouth, trying to breathe trying to breathe trying to breathe he can't breathe can't breathe can't -

Someone pushes him down, pushes his fingers away, pushes something over his mouth, his nose.

He struggles but then-

Air.

He goes limp.

There are voices above him and he hears snippets of a conversation, though the words don't seem to have any meaning.

"How long- screaming-"

"-Throat- raw- can't-" 

"--Recovery-"

"Maybe- help-"

"-Hospital is-"

"We need-Surgery-"

"-Therapy-"

Then, "No."

He blinks blearily, trying to focus on the the shifting figures just out the corner of his eyes.

Fights to keep them open, to stay conscious, but it's a losing battle and he just

slips

away.

 

This time, the darkness is welcoming.

 

He wanders a hallway of a million doors. He knows that each is locked, that he could never pick any of them, that no matter how much force he used, he would never open a single door.

Instead, he walks.

The hallway grows then shrinks around him, narrowing to a single point receding into the distance.

There is a voice behind him. _"-to fight together against-"_

He ignores it and keeps walking.

There is a voice beside him. _"-because he took me away from you-"_

He clenches his hands to keep them from shaking, and keeps walking.

There is a voice in front of him. _"-I'm done looking back."_

He stops.

There is a voice behind him and beside him and before him and above him and it _drags hims down back left right pushes him forward pulls him up saves him destroys him_.

**"You remain unavenged."**

He closes his eyes, maybe sobs, maybe feels a wetness trickle down his cheeks.

Walks forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References in this chapter:  
> The voices Jason hears in the hallway are all quotes (also. past, present, future).
> 
> 1\. "-to fight together against" is a segment that was also referenced back in chapter 3. The whole quote is actually an oath that Dick Grayson swore to Bruce when he first became Robin. It's been modified since then but the original, which was from Detective Comics #38 is: "and swear that we two will fight together against crime and corruption and never swerve from the path of righteousness", to which Dick replies "I swear it!"  
> I headcanon that Jason also swore that oath, or at least some version of it, and he's still kind of hung up over it. But we'll explore _that_ later. 
> 
> 2\. "-because he took me away from you-" is, of course, from Batman: Under the Red Hood as well as its source material, Under the Hood (Batman #650). The **full** line: "Why do all the cub scouts in spandex always say that? "If I cross that line, there's no coming back." I'm not talking about killing Cobblepot and Scarecrow or Clayface. Not Riddler or Dent... I'm talking about _him_. Just him. And doing it because... Because he took me away from you."
> 
> 3\. "-I'm done looking back." Jason, to Bruce in Batman and Robin, but I don't remember the issue number atm. Basically, Bruce took Jason to the place where he was murdered and Jason punched him because that was kind of awful on Bruce's part. Even though he was trying to find a way to bring Damian back.
> 
> 4\. "You remain unavenged." Talia, to Jason, in Red Hood - The Lost Days #2.
> 
> ...I'm pretty sure the word count in this note is more than the actual chapter. Whoops.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A breakdown in three parts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for panic attack? I think he's having a panic attack?

> He wakes up.

He wakes up cold and alone and tied down–he can’t move can’t move can’t move his armslegschest. He twists and pulls pulls _pulls_ , heart hammering in his chest. The beeping gets faster faster faster **louder,** it's the only thing he can hear he. 

Snarls

Teeth grit

But maybe he's not, maybe he's

biting down

on his tongue he.

Tastes blood

He tries to swallow it but it drowns him, filling his mouth and he.

Chokes chokes **chokes** can’t breathe

coughing coughing  _coughing._

He splutters

**Can’t breathe**

Only he can so he gulps down air

Enough

that 

he 

can

 _scream_.

 

> He wakes up.

He wakes up dizzy and drained. Pain blooms across his arms, legs, chest. With every fiber of his being, he hurts. His throat aches when he breathes, his head pounds when he thinks.

He _hurts_.

He breathes, ignoring the spike of agony that accompanies the action. Shifts, testing his range of motion.

He’s lying on his back, arms legs strapped down. His dream floods back to him and he struggles to keep himself from flinching. Wonders if it was really a dream.

He realizes that there _is_ a beeping noise coming from somewhere behind him, the sound of an ECG. He focuses on that, lets it drown out everything else.

Breathes.

 

Eventually, he wonders where he is. Looks around. Catalogues.

The room is small, and almost grating in its cleanliness.

He sees:

  * Two chairs are arranged by the door, cabinets on a wall and a counter with a sink and more cabinets below it.
  * A basket with a file folder by the bed.
  * Posters about regular screening, safe sex and the importance of consent are haphazardly attached to the walls.
  * A cork board with sheets of paper tacked on hangs next to a cheerful poster telling him to ‘check his situation’.



It looks like a room in a regular walk-in clinic but.

It’s been a while, but.

it’s not difficult to remember a place he’d seen so much when he was a kid. When he’d thought that magic was real and he could have it if he wore someone else’s hand-me-downs.

He wonders why he’s in Leslie’s clinic. Then everything starts to filter back to him.

 

He blanches. feeling his stomach twist. Closes his eyes to the sting of _regret regret regret_ and swallows down the anger clawing up his throat before he can lose himself to it, the way he did back in the freight yards.

He was careless. The man in the car could just as easily have shot this kids instead of going after Jason. More children could have been dead, more kids instead of just the one he-

His stomach lurches and he gags on the acrid taste of blood and bile and _pain and fear and another kid in Gotham’s wars another dead kid another kid he murdered another life that didn't need to die another son another death in a family._

He sucks in a breath then starts to laugh.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Something shifts. The door opens and a woman strides into the room.

Leslie Thompkins looks a lot older than the last time he saw her. More tired. Wary. Her eyes are guarded, face tight, lips pursed.

He watches as she rifles through the pages of the folder then flips back to the front. She writes something on the one of the pages before slipping it back into the basket. Then, as she turns to leave and her head lifts up, he moves an arm against the cord of the restraint. Not by much, but the action is deliberate and it should enough to grab her attention. And-

Bingo.

Leslie jerks around to face him completely.

From somewhere deep inside him, he drags up a winning smile and says, “What’s up, doc?”

She looks stunned for a second before her expression shifts into something harsher. “Jason,” she says flatly.

"That’s me, alright." He lets his smile widen, hopes his eyes aren’t as dead as the rest of him and continues. “Were you just checking? Or is there someone else taking my place?” _Again_ , he wants to say, but they can leave the insecure kiddie babble for another time. As in never.

 Leslie’s face shutters into something closer to anger and he grins. Wonders why he’s driving away someone (else) who saved his life.

“You came to _us_ , Jason,” Leslie grits. “You knocked on _my_ door. And that made you my responsibility. My patient. But do not think _for a second_ that you are not leaving the minute I clear you.”

He smirks and it feels knife-sharp and tight across his skin. “It will be my pleasure.”

The good doc opens her mouth as if to say something else then bites it down, mouth settling into a flat line.

Jason just watches her, some small, petty part of him getting a kick out of her reaction.

Finally, she says, “You have several contusions across your chest. Hairline fractures on the fourth and fifth ribs. You had a bullet in your leg. You _still_ have a bullet in your leg. I don't even know when you'll be able to-” Her voice cuts off and for a moment, she looks as shattered as he feels. “Jason.” The name is said shakily, seemingly echoing in the tiny room and a part of him wonders when he last heard it from someone other than Bruce and his brood. “Jason,” she repeats, and then swallows. “What have you _done_?”

The grin disappears. For the first time since she walked into the room, he lets his face go blank. 

“What I had to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The funny thing is that I've had this written out since the beginning-ish of March. Haha.  
> Whoops.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no plot in this one either, whooooops. Pero que sera, sera. ¿Sí?

Leslie recovers quickly, face cold and stern and disapproving.

He fights back a snarl, a _“don’t judge me”_ , a _“I nothing to prove to you”_ , because if he gave in, it would look like he _wanted_ to prove something. He doesn’t; not anything Leslie would listen to, not anything he hasn’t said a thousand times before. He’s tired of repeating himself. He’s tired. 

But not enough to show it.

Instead, he lets himself spill caustic words, lets himself drive away someone he looked up to once–before she failed him failed Gotham ran away like she deserved freedom. Like hers mattered more than anyone else's.

It didn’t.

No one in Gotham matters. Not the way they want to, not the way Gotham wants them to. Jason knows Gotham, knows her people because they’re _his_ people, just like Gotham is his, like he is Gotham’s. They are _all_ Gotham’s, and no Gothamite would ever be free from the city, not after she got her claws in them.

Leslie may have ran, but she's Gotham's all the same. 

Her presence here proves that.

So he drives her away from his. 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Leslie walks through the door and then, abruptly, he is alone.

 

The room shrinks to him, his bed, the space around him. A tiny, tiny space.

He tries to sit up, to draw his knees in, but then he remembers: restraints. Right. 

He settles for staring at the ceiling, a sky of offensively beige water-stained panels and glaring fluorescent lights. The one in the corner blinks and flickers and he counts the seconds in between them.

It varies but he thinks that maybe if he stopped counting, he could see a pattern in the spaces.

He doesn't stop counting.

His throat hurts so he says the numbers out loud, stubbornly refusing to let the pain hold him back control him.

Even when his voice begins to rasp, he continues.

When he’s finally bored of counting, he passes the time by singing songs had been old when he was a kid but he remembers his mother singing to him, voice low and raspy.

He closes his eyes and thinks about her: the smell of her corner store cigs, the way her hair would brush against his cheek when she kissed his forehead, her smile, her laugh. The way she'd looked when he found her on the floor. The way she'd looked when he packed up everything that they hadn't sold yet, and left before someone else found the body.

His mom's body.

He stops singing.

 

Eventually, someone else comes in. He raises his head up as much as he can to see who it is.

A nurse, clad in green scrubs and a face mask, walks to feet of his bed. She scrutinizes the clipboard there, and he arches an eyebrow.

"See something you like?" he cracks.

There's a pause before she reacts, head whipping up to look at him.

"Mr. Peters!" She gasps, "I didn't realize you were awake."

Only the angle of the room meant that the bed was in the direct line of sight of anyone who walked in. Curious.

He files that away and grins, "I'm a light sleeper," he says, and lets his smile widen. "My clothes...?" He trails off, makes it seem like a question so she can fill in the blank. Inwardly, his heart hammers. He doesn't know where the helmet is, though he has a faint recollection of taking it off at one point, but his 'uniform' (if it could even be called that) went a bit further than 'injured gang member'.

"I'm not sure I should be telling you that," the nurse says brightly, "when you're not supposed to leave that bed anytime soon."

He laughs. "And you think that I'll do that how, exactly?" He yanks at the restraints to add emphasis. "I'm open to suggestions, if you have any."

The nurse sounds disapproving (and he could swear he's heard that exact tone before from someone else) when she says, "I'm not going to tell you how to escape, Mr. Peters."

He sighs exaggeratedly then grins ruefully. "It was worth a try," he says. Even though it’s been a while since he played civilian, 'disarming wisecracker' is a pretty easy role to pull off. He thinks. If anyone disagrees, they've never told him.

Or lived long enough to.

"What's your name?" he asks instead.

"Hill," she replies.

He grins. "Nice to meet you, nurse Hill." His mind flicks to the fake ID he'd stuffed in his wallet before he'd left his safehouse and says, "I'm Jacob. But you probably knew that."

The nurse might have smiled, maybe not. "It's good to see you're feeling better, Mr. Peters."

"Good to _be_ feeling better."

She nods and grabs the clipboard. "I might see you later," she says, then he _knows_ she smiles. "If you're still awake."

He feigns being wounded and she laughs and leaves.

He waits a few moments then lets himself relax.

Just

for

a

few

seconds

.

..

....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lapse between updates. I've got the next few 'chapters' (if they can even be called that) written out already, so I'll try to post them soon.


	10. Chapter 10

He does not dream.  
Instead, he blinks awake slowly, struggling against the wave of tiredness that washes over him.  
His lips are dry and cracked and he drags his tongue over them.  
His body feels heavy. Weighted down.  
He swallows.  
Slips in and out of consciousness.


	11. Chapter 11

He wakes up and Batman is standing by his bed, mouth set in a line. 

“Jason,” he says.

“It’s Jacob,” Jason replies, both to be contrary and because he doesn’t know who could be listening. It comes out sounding more like _'Is Jaycoh'._ He frowns, noting the faint aftereffects of some kind of tranq in the way it's suddenly become difficult to enunciate consonants. 

“Jason,” Bruce–no one else ever manages to pack that much disapproval into his name–repeats flatly. “What are you doing here?”

“Dunno.” Jason puffs out a breath, squinting up at him. “Why don’ you tell me?”

Bruce looms over him, the shadows clinging in a way that golden boy had never quite managed to imitate. “Your presence here puts every patient in this clinic at risk,” he growls. “So tell me what you think you’re doing here.”

“ _I’m_ a patien’,” Jason slurs defiantly. “’M not pu'ing m’shelf a’ ris'.” He scowls. "Rish. Risc.  _Risk._ "

Bruce exhales. He looks at Jason lying battered and bruised and tied down, and some of his anger seems to drain out of him. Without the self-righteous need to fight for some ideal driving him, he looks smaller.

“What are you doing here, Jason?” His voice is quiet. Tired.

Jason feels tired too. He closes his eyes. 

“Dying,” he says, and only part of him doesn't mean it.


	12. Chapter 12

While Jason waits for a response, he cracks his jaw, feeling his muscles become more responsive as he does so.

Then Bruce says, “What do you mean? Your injuries-”

“Not from this,” Jason says, rolling his eyes. “ _Gosh_ B, you can be so literal sometimes.” Inwardly, he spares a brief moment of glee for regaining control over his speech.

Bruce emanates disapproval, both of them remembering that the last time Jason had said something like that, he’d been in hotpants and pixie boots. At least, that’s what Jason was remembering. Bruce might have been thinking about something completely different–you never really knew with him.

In the end, he says, “what were you talking about if not-” he shifts, almost uncomfortably, then gestures at Jason, lying prone on the bed, “-this.”

Jason does his best to shrug. “Dunno.”

He’s delighted to see a muscle in Bruce’s jaw jump, the one concession he made when he was starting to get pissed at Jason.

“Elaborate,” Bruce says flatly.

There's a moment where he goes breathless with rage, where his fingers curl into a fist, and the muscles in his arms tense against the cords binding them, and his teeth clench down.

Then he breathes and the urge to kill passes and all that's left is the anger, the dizzying feeling of hatehatehate in his stomach, and its bitter taste in his mouth.

Jason levels a glare at Bruce. “I don’t owe you anything,” he snarls. “Not an explanation, not an elaboration – _nothing._ You don’t get to show up here and demand anything from me.”

“Jason-”

“ _Jacob,”_ Jason interrupts, voice raising as he speaks. “That’s the man I am right now. Jacob. William. Peters.”

“I don’t-“

“That’s the man I am right now,” Jason repeats. “And the man I am right now has nothing on his criminal record worth the notice of _the Bat._ And that means you don’t need to be here.”

"You're-"

 “You don’t need to be _anywhere_ near here.” Jason grinds between clenched teeth.

Bruce – _Batman_ – clenches his jaw. “I didn’t come here for this,” he snaps. “I came here for answers.”

 

Jason laughs and it’s harsh and dark and filled with something more than anger. “What were you going to do to get your ‘answers’?” he sneers. “Beat me up?” 

His arms yank at the restraints, an aborted attempt to spread them. He knows that Bruce’s eyes have flicked over to them underneath his cowl, cataloguing the strength of the restraints and what would be needed to escape them and all the other useless crap Bruce stores in his head in the pursuit of ‘being prepared’.

Jason smiles. 

It’s ugly and bitter and filled with something more than hate.

“I’m already broken,” he says, and it feels like a confession. “You’re not getting anything more from me.”

 


	13. Chapter 13

There is a pause.

Bruce, Jason thinks for one breathless, _daring_ moment, has the same kind of harsh, classic beauty that inspired ancient Greco-Roman statues. Then the moment passes and Aphrodite breathes life into Pygmalion’s statue and Bruce exhales and becomes something more human. He snags a chair and sinks down into it. Once settled, he steeples his fingers. The passive stare of his mask offers no clue as to his emotions, and _beneath_ his mask, Bruce’s mouth has settled into the default tight-lipped line. Then it opens and from it, two words Jason had never thought to hear:

“I’m sorry.”

Jason stares. "What?" he asks. He tries to recover, to yank back onto reality, sure that he is drifting again, dreaming something that isn’t true – has never been (and will never be) true.

But this _is_ real, _is_ happening, and Bruce _is_ sitting beside his bed and he _does_ have the balls to pretend he actually care about Jason – this Jason – not the one who died years ago, but the one in front of him now. 

Bruce, Jason thinks in that one breathless, _terrible_ moment, is a fool. He is also still speaking.

“-have let you into the field with that mindset,” he says.

“What mindset are we talking about here,” Jason interrupts, voice acidic. “The one where I thought I could help people? Or the one where I thought _you_ could?”

“The one where you thought you were invincible,” Bruce snarls.

That’s where Bruce is wrongwrongwrong again, because Jason had never thought that he was invincible. Just that if he died, it wouldn’t matter.

And he was right: it didn’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you guys prefer longer chapters every other week? Or shorter chapters (around the same size as what they are now) biweekly?


	14. Chapter 14

The best course of action, he realises, is to say none of that. Not when he has no idea how Bruce would respond; the man seems to think that throwing criminals in a mental asylum will somehow stop them from ever committing a crime again. It’s worked for absolutely no one (who mattered, anyways), but Bruce has this thing about giving the worst people a second chance, even if it doesn’t work for him. Even if they go on to hurt people that didn't need to be hurt, people that could had been saved.

The last time Jason was caught by the Bat, he’d ended up in Arkham, and that had worked out _so well_ for everyone involved. 

Distantly, he remembers the sound of his jail cell sliding shut, the echo of the Joker’s laughter _day in day out every hour every minute shut it up shutitupshutupshutupshutUP._

He blinks.

Reins himself back in.

Unclenches first his jaw, then his fingers from where they’d been digging into the sheets.

Bruce is still waiting for an answer, he realizes. He narrows his eyes at the other man.

“Shouldn’t you be on patrol?” he asks. Refuses to respond to Bruce’s self-directed bull. “You know, preventing the superstitious and cowardly lot from going down the wrong path? I heard Freeze got out. Why aren’t you obsessing over that?” _And not here_ , he doesn’t say (however much the words may burn on his lips).

Bruce’s face is impassive. There’s no question that he noticed Jason avoiding that particular conversation. “He was returned to Arkham two nights ago,” he says.

“Two nights?” Jason’s eyebrows shoot up. That’s a bit strange considering- “He broke out yesterday.”

For the first time, he sees Bruce hesitate.

The brief break in the man’s composure tells him that he won’t like whatever he hears next, and for a second, he almost regrets asking.

“Ja-cob,” Bruce says. (There’s a split second where Jason is disappointed he remembered to stick to Jason’s cover.) “It’s Thursday. You’ve been here for three days.”

 _I never could get the hang of Thursdays,_ Jason thinks reflexively. Then, _no wonder I feel like shit._ Then the full meaning of Bruce’s statement actually sinks in.

 _“What?”_ he splutters. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” Bruce’s voice leaves no room for argument.

 “Thursday…” Jason whistles. “Wow. Okay.” There was so much he’d had planned. So many things he’d needed to do. He’s missed a check-in with Talia, a meeting with a gang down by the lighthouse…

 “Okay,” he repeats. His mind flickers, for an instant to the kids from the train and the old woman he’d met. He wonders, irrationally, if they’re still receiving treatment.

Bruce watches him, silent.

He ignores the feeling that the cowl is boring a hole through him, that Bruce can somehow peel away all the layers and see what he’s thinking. Refuses to move out of his field of vision (not that he’d be able to, anyways.)

He’s _worn_ the cowl. It may come equipped with night vision and infrared lenses, but there’s no x-ray vision installed. (Yet.)

He breathes in then exhales. Turns his head to the side and looks at Bruce directly.

“If it’s been three days,” he says, “why am I not already in Arkham?”

“Your injuries were too severe to risk transportation,” Bruce answers flatly. “You would have bled out on the way there.”

“Bullshit,” Jason snorts. “If that were the case, then I’d still be on the way _now._ Why am I not?”

Bruce scowls. “Your persona has no connection to the Red Hood,” he says grudgingly. “There is nothing to link you to him at the moment.”

“You’ve got DNA records,” Jason’s eyes narrow. “Thumbprints. I’m in the system already.”

“Those files no longer exist.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jason asks incredulously.

“Someone must have tampered with your records,” Bruce says (and _wow_ , he sounds pissed). “Any information that could link to your identity has been erased or irreparably damaged.”

 _Talia?_ It must have been. _But why would she do that? Unless..._ Jason files the thought away because that’s still not the point.

“You don’t need evidence,” he accuses. “Aren’t you above the law or something? Those pigs at the GCPD would be happy to accept anyone you turned in. You’d only have to truss me up with some wire and –”

“We work _with_ the law,” Bruce interrupts, “or have you forgotten even that?”

“The ‘law’ doesn’t work!” Jason snarls. “Or have _you_ forgotten that?”

“It’s necessary,” Bruce grinds.

“It’s flawed,” Jason retorts. No, worse – “it’s fractured. Useless. A broken system. A revolving door. Criminals go in then come right back –”

“It’s necessary,” Bruce repeats.

Rises.

“That’s it?” Jason asks in disbelief. “The conversation’s not going your way so you’re just going to leave?”

“There’s no point in discussing this right now,” Bruce says. “You’re not –”

“You’re the one running away!” Jason snaps.

Bruce clenches his jaw. “You’re the one who’s been running.” He turns. Walks away.

“What does that even mean?” Jason calls after him.

The door clicks shut.

“What does that even _mean_?” he grumbles.

Lying in that room by himself, his anger – the main force keeping awake – slowly drains away.

He stares up at the ceiling.

Struggles to keep his eyes open.

 

He blinks.

 

Once.

 

Twice.

 

Drifts.

 

_Wakes up._

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

The room is the same as before, everything in the same position as he remembers it.

And yet…

And yet, there’s a feeling of stillness that permeates his surroundings, a silence he knows will choke him out if he tries to speak.

Then the silence is broken.

He hears the ticking first, quiet but steadily ticking in the background.

Then he hears the laughter.

He thinks ‘ _no_ ’, because this is wrong. He’s in Leslie’s clinic. The Joker’s in Arkham. This is wrongwrong _wrong._

He breathes.

The person laughing grows louder and louder and louder and they drown out even the sound of his heart hammering in his ears.

He swallows back the panic that threatens to overwhelm him.

_ This isn’t real, _ he reminds himself. _None of this is real._

He repeats it out loud as the footsteps in the hall come closer

and closer

and the door bursts open.

“Jason,” Leslie says.

His eyes flick up to her face, cataloguing her features - the frown her lips form, the creases at the side of her eyes – then back at the doorway. Back towards the sound of the Joker laughinglaughinglaughing.

“Jason!”

He blinks.

“I need you to breathe for me, okay?”

He nods, a jerk of the head to the side.

“ _Breathe.”_

He does. _Is._

In and out and in and out and in and out andinandoutandinand-

“Jason, I need you to concentrate on my voice, okay?” He listens – to the rise and fall of her voice, the way it shakes as she speaks.

“Jason!” she snaps, sharply.

He starts.

“Breathe with me, okay? I’ll count and we’ll breathe together, okay?”

A part of him is annoyed at the fact that she’s repeating herself, as if she thinks he can’t understand her.

The rest of him has realized that he’s breathing too quickly, breath coming out in pants, that his chest is aching, that his arms feel weak. He tries to breathe in deeply but it doesn’t help _whydoesn’tithelp_ -

“We’re going to breathe together,” Leslie says. A hand snakes down to somewhere out of his view and then something happens to make it feel like a weight has lifted off his chest. “Okay? On the count of three, we’re going to breathe in, then we’ll hold it for four seconds, then we’ll breathe out. How does that sound?” He nods, eyes wide and locked onto her face.

“Okay, one… Two… Three…

“Breathe.”

He closes his eyes and breathes through his mouth and it hurts.

Then he holds it in and it’s worse, some part of him trying to take in more air faster, desperate to fill his lungs. The air rattles in his chest, against his battered ribs, like a prisoner shaking the bars of its cell.

Then he breathes out, and it’s a relief, even as he’s careful to not release it all at once, to keep going as Leslie continue to count.

Then he does it again.

And again.

And again.

In and hold and out and hold and in and hold and out and hold and in and –

At some point, he releases the tight – desperate – grip he had on the hem of Leslie’s scrubs, and his hand relaxes back down to his side.

She counts and he breathes, and time slips away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> expect chapter 16 around the 21st? maybe?


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has it been six months since I last updated? Yes, yes it has. Do I regret that it's taken me so long? Yes. But there are better ways to jolt a person into posting a new chapter than demanding it. I almost didn't want to update out of spite, but then I felt guilty again.  
> So here it is, a short thing to tide you over until I'm finished with exams.

Leslie releases his hand slowly and Jason chooses to study the wall beside the bed instead of looking at her face.

“Jason,” she says.

He opens his mouth to say something-maybe _“don’t,”_ or _“I don’t want to talk about it”-_ but there’s nothing to talk about. Before the words-whatever they are-can come spilling out, there’s a knock at the door.

“Jason,” Leslie says again. Her hand slips into his again and she squeezes. “We do have to talk about this. You need to talk to someone about-” She cuts off abruptly as the knock comes again, then sighs. Stands. “I’ll be back soon,” she tells him.

She greets someone as she slips out of the room, the door clicking shut behind her. Jason strains to hear whatever it is that Leslie and the knocker are talking about but their voices are too low for him to pick up properly. Eventually, they both fall silent and he hears the clip of heels on the ground as someone walks further away from the room.

Leslie does not return.

Alone without even the beeping of his ECG monitor to fill the silence, Jason squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to focus.

First thing’s first, he needs to get out of the restraints.

Leslie had released the one across his torso earlier, when he had-when he-when. Earlier. But that still leaves him with the other two. Luckily, now that he can think more clearly, he remembers how to deal with this kind. It’s just a matter of reaching far enough to be able to untie the strap from where it’s fastened to the bed, and then one hand is free. And once he’s rid of the restraints binding both of his hands, it’s easy to deal with the ones around his feet.

After he’s completely free, he slides himself forward to the edge of the bed and stands carefully, mindful of the painpainpain throbbing throughout the side of his chest. Once he can manage that without his knees buckling underneath him, he pushes himself forward.

After safely wobbling over to the foot of his bed, he picks up the folder that the nurse had seemed so interested in.

‘Jacob Peters,’ it says, in cramped letters across the bottom, and there’s a moment of disconnect before he remembers the fake ID he seems to be registered under. He’d known right away when he was talking to Bruce, but the memory of that conversation seems to be growing fainter by the minute, shrouded in a haze of tiredness.

The first page in the folder is filled with scribbles in blue ink and the most he can make of it is his (fake) name and a few numbers-maybe the date? He looks more closesly, but can’t quite figure out if the numbers in the middle are 05, 06, or 08.

The next page, however, is typed, and seems to be the results from a blood test. The page after that is a summary of observations from an x-ray, and the page after that describes something about a CT scan. The pages that follow are along the same lines: a MRI, a urinealysis, then more sheets filled with scribbles.

Jason bites down the instinctive flash of anger-at the invasion of his privacy and of everything he’s spent a year trying to keep away from Bruce, at the fear that maybe there were other tests done on him, and they just haven’t been placed in the chart yet or were sent straight to Bruce-and forces himself to take a step back and look at the results.

He reads through the chart slowly, frowning as he realizes that aside from the cracked ribs and loss of blood, there doesn’t seem to be anything especially wrong with him. He scans the few pages of the file again, a little bit faster; then once more, before he finally flips it shut and slides it back into the basket. A sick feeling settles in his stomach.

He breathes in then exhales slowly.

 _Ok_ , he thinks. _What are the facts?_

The facts are this:

  * He was shot multiple times by some amateur slavers because he let himself lose control.
  * He’s got a bit more lead in him now but the majority of the damage remaining comes from his cracked ribs, which is probably why it hurts to breathe.
  * He lost a lot of blood because, like an idiot, he didn’t leave those kids to wait for the police by themselves and deal with his injuries early enough for him to be thinking properly.
  * Not thinking straight landed him _here._ (‘Here’ being the clinic of one Dr. Leslie Thompkins, do-gooder and ally to the Bats-which he had thought would endear her to all vigilantes but maybe not.)
  * He’s hopped up on anesthesia, maybe morphine, definitely effective, which means he probably can’t trust anything he’s heard or seen to be real.
  * According to Bruce, (who was potentially Not Real and may not be a reliable source of information), he’s been in the clinic for three, maybe four days now.
  * A lot can happen in Gotham in three-maybe-four days.
  * Whatever scheme the Bats have come up with, he needs to get out of the clinic and figure out what’s really going on.



He drops the file back into the basket and looks around. There shouldn’t be anything useful in the cabinets, and a quick search through them asserts exactly that.

So. He’s in a room without any windows or vents large enough for him to use. Meanwhile, the window of time he has left to get away is rapidly shrinking, and with no alternative, he’s left with the most dangerous option.

Right.

He grits his teeth and, as he opens the door, a half-remembered quote flits through his head.

_‘I do not without danger walk-’_

He braces himself, and walks out into the brightly lit hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) "I do not without danger walk these streets" (Twelfth Night. 3.3.25)


	17. Chapter 17

The walls have been repainted, he realizes. They’re no longer the gray/brown combo that had seemed so dreary when he was a kid, now a light shade of green.

It’s not the only thing that’s changed. The prints of impressionist paintings are all gone and in their place is a giant corkboard covered in pamphlets and infographs. The waiting chairs have been upgraded to leather. Even the floor is different, a gray-ish tile instead of the scuffed linoleum he remembers.

He shakes himself mentally and keeps going.

The kitchenette on the right of the hallway is as sparse as ever. Across from it, the door to the first room he tries is locked. In the next examination room, the sound of someone talking is clear even from the hallway. As he turns to try the third door, he hears the clip of footsteps coming down the hall around the corner.

A spark of panic lights in his stomach. He can’t get caught he can’t get caught he-

darts towards the one room that is almost always left unlocked at this time of the day, hoping against hope that this is one thing that remains unchanged-

The knob turns easily under his hand and he slips into the room. Waits for a minute, for the clip of heels to pass. Once he's mostly sure he's not in danger of being caught, he feels along the wall for the light switch, then blinks as his eyes adjust to the brightness.

In the time since he’s last been in Leslie’s clinic, the storage room seems to be one of the many things to remain the same. Even the stacks of boxes on top of the filing cabinets look like they haven’t been moved in years. He wades through the clutter to the other side of the room where, under a thick layer of dust, he finds the Lost and Found box. The cardboard is crumpled and the marker is faded but it's still got clothes in it, even after all these years.

He rifles through the box and finds, among other pieces of lost or ripped clothing:

 

  * Three pairs of jeans, all too small
  * One pair of sweatpants
  * Two tie-dyed t-shirts
  * One pink winter jacket
  * Three one-sided flip flops
  * One ripped long sleeved cardigan
  * Two beanies, one of which is neon green and the other a lurid shade of orange



 

He pulls on the cardigan and the sweatpants, then shoves the green beanie over his hair. He eyes the flip flops dubiously; at this time of the year, it won’t be too cold to wear them but going barefoot might actually grab less attention and be less of a hindrance to his mobility. He lifts one of them up and checks the size before dropping it back in the bin.

Barefoot it is.

He opens the door and pads back into the hallway.

It stretches in front of him, back towards the room he’d been kept in, but there’s also a branch to the left where he should be able to find the stairs down to the ground floor. From what he can remember, Leslie’s office is past the lab, and both are downstairs, so he should have a bit more time to get out of the building.

With that in mind, he moves to the left and checks the next door. The knob turns easily and he sees- a desk, cardboard boxes, piles of paper- Leslie.

He shuts the door quietly and backs away, heart hammering. He swivels around and sprints towards the emergency stairwell, throwing the door open and flying down the steps as fast as his legs will let him go.

Behind him, he hears the door to the office (it’s been years he should have _expected_ her to change the room order at some point) open.

“Who was that?” Leslie calls sharply. Her voice has always carried; it cuts through the silence of the clinic. 

Two flights down and he scrambles through the first floor of the clinic, past the main office and lab and through the waiting room. His feet skid over the mats, he ducks his head down, pushes for one last burst of speed, pushes against the door to the outside world-

Freedom.

 


	18. Chapter 18

A blast of muggy air washes over him as he sprints out of the clinic. The asphalt digs into his bare feet but he doesn’t stop running until he’s a few blocks away from the clinic. He slows down when he passes Park Row-maybe out of some misplaced sentimentality-but there’s nothing there for him right now. He keeps moving, turning sharply into another alley and then heading west. He stops at the crosswalk of one of the busier intersections of the East End, noting a fresh set of bouquets and candles by the post. As the light turns yellow, a convertible skids past, honking. From the back seat, a whistle and a call of "how much?", then laughter.

It starts to rain.

Rain in Gotham is like piss; it’s warm, not something you’d want in your mouth, and it happens several times a day. At this time of the year however, it’ll be over in half an hour or so. There’s no sense in trying to wait it out and wasting even more time. He skirts around a rapidly forming puddle and walks a bit faster.

Once he’s into the higher traffic areas, where the buildings are newer and a bit closer together, he pulls himself up onto the rooftops. With that, it’s only a matter of minutes before he’s disengaging his security rig and slipping through the window of safehouse number who-even-cares.

Jason grabs some clean clothes, double checks the alarms to make sure they’re primed, then limps towards the bathroom. He peels off his wet clothes and steps into the shower.

Hot water turns to cold long before he feels clean. He stands under the spray, water and soap stinging in his eyes and in the cuts on his feet. It is only when he starts to shiver that he turns off the tap. He stays still for a moment, dripping wet, head bowed against the tiled wall, then pushes himself into motion. As he dresses, he sees his reflection in the mirror out of the corner of his eye. For once, the sight of it doesn’t fill him with anger so much as a feeling of tiredness that settles under his skin.

He checks his system one last time then topples sideways onto the mattress in the corner.

Sleep comes quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the dream, they place him into the coffin still alive. His ribs and skull are shattered, his lungs scorched, and he can feel his organs slipping out of his body. Bruce wraps his cape around him gently. It is the only thing keeping all the pieces of him together. The other hands holding him down are more forceful.

 _“Let me out,”_ Jason tries to say, but he’s still gagged.

 _“Let me out,”_ he begs, but they slide the lid over him. He feels himself being lifted, then lowered down into the earth. He hammers against the top but it doesn’t budge; they’ve already started filling the grave.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ he sobs. _“Please, no. I’m sorry.”_

The coffin lid breaks. He suffocates under an avalanche of dirt.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dark google, teach me how to write fight scenes

Jason shudders awake, hands fisted in the thin sheet pooled around him. He draws in one painful breath, feels the air rattle in his chest, and lets it out slowly. Golden light filters through the slats of the shutters, and his chest in profile casts a long shadow against the scratched linoleum. He’s covered with a thin layer of sweat and with the muggy humidity of a Gotham summer, it’s more than a little bit uncomfortable. The room is filled with a heavy silence. He pushes himself up and takes another shower.

Talia doesn’t pick up when he calls and he doesn’t bother to leave a message. He grabs a spare jacket and helmet and heads out instead, stopping by a street cart near the Sprong Bridge for some food. The vendor eyes the knot of scar tissue on the back of his hand as Jason passes over a wad of bills but in the end, she just pulls the bill of her Gotham Knights cap lower and says nothing. Jason sits on the edge of a rooftop and watches the light of the Cape Carmine lighthouse sweep across the bay as he scarfs down his third chili dog. By the time he’s done two more, the sky is streaked with orange and red. The wail of sirens sounds out from somewhere behind him.

Jason shoves his head into his helmet and goes looking for trouble.

He finds it in the form of one Timothy Jackson Drake, two hours later. The other vigilante is in the middle of the Bowery, responding to a distress call made by a GCPD unit on patrol. Jason watches from a distance, catching a brief flash of red as Red Robin glides over to the empty cruiser and crouches down to inspect the ground below it. He ignores the brief curl of anger and bypasses the gravel lot entirely, heading towards the likeliest place the missing blue boys might be: Crown Point.

Crown Point is to the Bowery what Crime Alley is to the East End. It’s filthy and worn, filled with crumbling buildings and the rubble of one failed renewal project after the other. The people in Crown Point are wary and distrustful, trapped by the steep price of living anywhere else in Gotham.

This time of night, the streets are desolate, flickering street lamps kept company by the occasional car that speeds past. The eerie silence of the district is broken only by the muted chatter that spills out of one of its many pubs. A dog barks, hidden somewhere amongst the tall brush. The Bowery somehow manages to be an industrial small town in the middle of Gotham Harbor; the ninth wonder of Gotham City.

Jason skirts around the edges of the residential zone, making a beeline towards the river. There, nestled amidst the shipping containers and industrial clutter is the old wharf from Gotham's bygone silver age. When Miller Harbour became Gotham's preferred port, the Bowery lost one of its main sources of traffic, pushing the district further into depression. Now, though the vast majority of factories that line this part of the bay are still in use, there's an air of neglect that lingers. Jason doesn't bother inspecting each one individually, heading towards the edge of the sprawling complexes. Even from a distance he can tell that there’s a light on in the lower level and, as he nears, he can hear voices from inside.

“-tell us what we need to know and we'll let you go,” someone snarls.

Jason rolls his eyes as he slips in through a broken window on the second floor. Sometimes, he thinks, it's as if these guys are all reading from the same melodramatic script.

The elevator shaft has been stripped bare, likely out of disuse. He hops over the 'CAUTION’ tape and leverages himself down into the floor below. The beams running along the ceiling offer a vantage point of the assembly floor so, like many times before,  he crouches down in the shadows and scans the room.

There, in the corner of the floor, stand four men. They're heavy set, with the typical wide shoulders and lumbering frame that seem to be required by the job description. No visible weaponry aside from the machine gun that two of them have slung across their chests and the rifle that the one talking has pointed at the men of the hour. Two of Gotham's finest are trussed up and sitting on plastic folding chairs.

“Don't tell them shit!” One of them snaps, glaring at her fellow detainee.

“What the fuck does it matter, huh?” He responds. “Gordon's gone and Atkins will never be able to do as much good as he did. I'm not gonna stick my neck out just to save his.”

“So you're just going to rat us out,” the female officer snarls, voice rising in disbelief. “Is that how it is? God, I knew you were a pig, Nate, but I didn't think you were scum too.”

“It’s always the same with you guys, isn't it?” Nate retorts, shoulders hiking up to his ears as his face turns red. “Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been your partner, just because I wasn't in No Man's Land, all of a sudden I'm not a true Gothamite or what fucking ever. Well, I'm sick of it, okay? And I'm sick of you trying to pretend that this city isn't going to pieces, like it hasn't been going to pieces for the past fucking thirty years. I'm sick of this fucking city and I'm sick of being a target just because some wacko dressed up in an out of season Halloween costume and his goons want to prove a point to who even knows who, as if Fields wasn’t bad enough-”

At this, one of the aforementioned goons coughs. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says, jabbing the rifle against Nate’s chest. “I think that's enough out of you.”

Nate, surprisingly, shuts up.

“Look,” Goon With A Rifle says, “we don't want to be caught up in this either. So just fucking tell us what you wanted with the bossman and we'll be on our merry way. We'll only shoot you twice even. It'll be quick, just 'pop pop’.” He taps the nozzle of the rifle against Nate’s head twice demonstratively.

“Won't feel anything,” Goon With A Machine Gun #1 adds helpfully. “You'll be dead.”

“Think that's the point, Rick” a third Goon grunts. He shifts and Jason moves closer to see- yeah, he's got a pistol strapped to his left leg.

The last goon, the one with the other machine gun, stays silent, gaze heavy on the two captives.

“We don't even know who your bossman is!” Nate says, with no small amount of hysteria. “Romy wanted to follow up on a lead for the ”

“Oh, yeah?” Leftie says. “And why were you two esteemed officers stopping right in the middle of that particular car lot, huh? Didn’t think you’d get any calls about illegal parking.”

“That's none of your business,” Romy grinds out.

“As fascinating as this is,” Jason comments drily, dropping down on top of Goon 4. “We're going to have to end this comedy sketch here.”

Goon 4 lets out a startled yell as he crumples with a spectacular crunch. Theher three whirl around with an impressive reaction time but Jason's already diving behind some equipment nearby.

Two shots and Leftie goes down. Rick shoots with no particular aim, shells clattering to the floor as he waves the machine gun wildly.

“You even know how to use that thing?” Jason remarks, rolling his eyes underneath his mask. Roll to get better cover, wait three seconds then _squeeze-_

A spray of bullets later, Rick is down too, blood already pooling on the factory floor.

Goon 1 looks ashen as he stumbles closer to his two hostages. “Don't come any closer or I'll shoot!” His voice wavers, much of his earlier bravado gone like the wind.

“Do you honestly think I give a rat's ass about GCPD officers?” Jason snorts.

That throws Goon 1 for a loop. “You're one of them vigilantes aren't you?” He stammers. “Batman's group.”

“Batman doesn't kill,” Jason smirks. _Pop pop_ ; it's just as quick as Goon 1 had said it would be.

Jason walks over to Goon 4, who's only now stirring with a low moan. He prods the man with the toe of his boot and hums to himself a little as he brings the barrel of his gun up-

“Wait!”

It's Romy, surprisingly, that's the source of the outburst. Jason turns to still-trussed-up officers with a twist to his lips and a spread of his arms; with the helmet on, he’s taken to being a bit more dramatic with his body language. “What?” He asks, frustrated. “Don’t tell me you want me to spare his life.”

“Let us take him into custody,” she demands, raising her chin a little to look at him properly. “There’s no one with any claim over the Bowery - or there shouldn't be. If there’s someone new trying to make this their territory, that’s GCPD business.”

“Are you crazy, Romy?” her partner asks. “We don’t negotiate with these guys, you know that.”

“I’m a little tired of hearing your voice, Nate,” Jason says flatly.

Nate splutters, turning red.

“Look, officer. Officers. I don’t fucking care. You want this low-life breathing, you can take care of him yourselves. Here, I’ll even make sure that he won’t run off until someone comes by to get you free.”

Jason pivots and shoots Goon 4 in the kneecap. He howls, abruptly conscious, and Jason kicks him in the side to shut him up. The hulking man whimpers, clutching his leg as tears start trickling down the side of his face.

“Hey!” Both officers lurch forward in their chairs. Jason rolls his eyes. _You try to do someone a favour…_

He lets himself out through the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! *cringes* Please don't kill me. I swear that I didn't mean for this to take so long. I'm amazed that people are still somehow managing to find this fic even though I haven't updated in... more than a year. I really struggled with this and I think a big part of that is because it's been so long since I've been sure where I wanted to take this. Shout-out to Lia for guilting and encouraging me to keep up with this even when I was seriously considering dropping it. A lot has happened - mainly good things, I think - but I hope that I'll be able to update more frequently than once a year.
> 
> PS. Nate and Romy are *not* OCs. They exist, I swear. Comic rec: Gotham Central--- it's an oldie but still good.  
> PPS. Happy birthday Jason Todd! I didn't mean for this to happen but it did. I'm sorry I put you through all of this but I swear it'll be worth it. We've got miles to go.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://www.theedas.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat.


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